Victor Hugo · 1862
Les Misérables
1862
“There is one spectacle grander than the sea, that is the sky; there is one spectacle grander than the sky, that is the interior of the soul.”
Begin ReadingIn 1815, a peasant named Jean Valjean is released from prison after nineteen years — five for stealing a loaf of bread, fourteen for trying to escape. He is met with the hard face of a society that has no room for him. Then a bishop shows him mercy, and everything changes. Victor Hugo's Les Misérablesis the story of one man's transformation through grace — and of the society that creates the criminals it punishes.
“If the soul is left in darkness, sins will be committed. The guilty one is not he who commits the sin, but the one who causes the darkness.”
— Les Misérables
Published in 1862, the novel runs to over 1,400 pages. It is a story of love and revolution, mercy and law, suffering and redemption. It contains massive digressions on the Battle of Waterloo, the Paris sewers, and monastic life. It is the great novel of social justice — and this site is your guide to its world.